Wado World Cup – Women’s Kata

At the Wado World Cup 2010 it was interesting to see the various countries performing Kata. I actually found the kata more interesting that the Kumite, and being a fighter, this is something that I never thought would happen. Everyone was a part of the JKF-Wadokai family, but there were still subtle differences between the different countries.

I’m relatively new to being a Kata competitor myself, my first ever Kata competition was the Japan Wadokai Nationals in 2008. Despite my lack of experience I was still surprised to see balance issues during performances being missed or ignored, I’ve always thought that this was an important point.

SENIOR WOMEN INDIVIDUAL KATA – SEMI FINAL NO 1

The first video shows Nao Sekikawa from Japan (AKA) against Louise Fisk, former Shiramizu Intern and member of the New Zealand Team performing in the Semi Finals. The second video is Louise’ kata.

Louise had to go through 4 rounds for her 3rd place medal whereas Sekikawa was rather luckier in the draw being seeded to round 2, and then getting a bye through round 3. Sekikawa then came up against Amy Coulson from England and then met Louise.

SENIOR WOMEN INDIVIDUAL KATA – SEMI FINAL NO 2

The first video is Jessica Buschor from Switzerland, and the second is Emiri Iwamoto from Japan. Iwamoto got to this stage without dropping a single flag, and it’s easy to see why.

SENIOR WOMEN INDIVIDUAL KATA – FINAL

This was an all Japan final, with Nao Sekikawa (AKA) losing out to Emiri Iwamoto (AO). Iwamoto went onto win the JKF-Wadokai Nationals the week after this Wado World Cup too.

Video note: I had to MUTE the audio on this video because there was a very random conversation going on between Amy and Louise :-), I was tempted to put a cool soundtrack to it… but couldn’t decide between heavy rock and cheesy pop.